In DE 43 13 841 A the beater is used to guide crop residue away from an axial separator and feed it to a straw chopper. For improving the lateral distribution of the crop residue, an adjustable straw guiding element is provided between the outlet of the beater and the inlet to the straw chopper. The embodiments of this publication used with an axial separator do not lay long straw on the ground. For an embodiment with a straw rocker, for which no beater is used, there is a pivoting intake panel, which is mounted on the lower end of the rocker and which outputs the straw into the straw chopper in one position and outputs the straw onto the ground before the straw chopper in its other position. Due to spatial restrictions, such an intake panel cannot be used on combines with axial separators and their associated beaters.